Amtrak is now saying the right things. Will they start doing the right things, like correcting last year’s flawed route studies as the first step toward a dramatically expanded national system?

But first, a correction on the list of Florida stations in the last issue. Amtrak serves Kissimmee and Lakeland between Tampa and Orlando. The other stations are were on the alternate Jacksonville-Tampa line, which Amtrak no longer uses. I am writing the column from Scottsdale; I have lived in the Phoenix area since 1991, Northern Virginia before that, and Boston for most of my first 23 years. I mistakenly copied the wrong list of stations, probably remembering my trips on the Silver Star and Silver Meteor to St. Petersburg and Clearwater in the 1980s. Mea culpa.

Now, to this week.

In the 1940s, a consortium of companies symbolically led by General Motors drove the privately-owned street railway business to bankruptcy.

Seven decades later, the streetcar returned the favor.

No, that’s not strictly true; but it is a curious reversal of fortune — karma? — suggested by one of three college students who visited the Phoenix Trolley Museum on Saturday afternoon. (The intelligence of the young never ceases to amaze. And signing up some bright new members who have been spending their days and nights devouring everything about trains and buses that the Internet can offer, is a very good thing.)

National City Lines, organized by G.M.’s Alfred P. Sloan to purchase trolley lines and replace them with rubber-tired, fuel-burning buses, was at least a symptom if not one of the myriad causes of the failure of the street railway industry. The trolley was a bellwether for the impending crisis in passenger trains generally.

Conversely, the growth of cities building rail transit in recent years has mirrored a growing dissatisfaction. The postwar suburban consumption-based lifestyle has proven to be an ecological, social, and economic cul-de-sac. Yet in my city of Phoenix, as elsewhere, business along the streetcar — pardon me, “light rail line” — is the bright spot of the local economy; Mesa, which once grudgingly permitted a single rail station to be built just inside its border, has seen the light called “transit means business” and is extending the line to bring shoppers, workers and students to its moribund downtown.

And this reversal of the streetcar’s fortune is proving to be a bellwether for the passenger train generally.

We now turn to two guest columnists. Rob Bohannan attended Amtrak’s Town Hall in Chicago last week; Daniel Carleton wrote in January on why the route studies completed in 2009 exposed fundamental barriers to our much-needed passenger train system expansion. The juxtaposition of these two columns raises the question: If Amtrak is now letting the once-hidden good ideas from inside bubble to the surface, when will we see the potential of a new equipment order resulting in new routes all across the country? Does Amtrak’s new emphasis on long distance trains as fundamental to its mission and future represent the first steps toward correcting the issues Mr. Carleton raises?

I leave you with these reports and those questions, which we shall ponder again next time. — William Lindley

Illinois Report

by Robert H. Bohannan, AICP (March 2010)

Saturday, March 6, Amtrak and Trains Magazine co-sponsored a “Dialog for Progress” Town Hall Meeting at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago.  Many of Amtrak’s “top brass” were there, including Board Chairman Tom Carper, President Joe Boardman, and Chief John O’Connor of the Amtrak Police Department.  The three main topics of discussion were the Amtrak Photography and Videography Guidelines, Fleet Strategy, and Long Distance Service.

Photography. Chief O’Connor did an excellent job of explaining Amtrak’s photography policy.  Essentially, Amtrak would like to be notified in advance if one is going to do extensive photographing on Amtrak property—other than photography taken by boarding and alighting passengers or photos taken onboard trains—of the passing scenery, for example.  Given the proven use of photography by terrorists in preparation for attacks on infrastructure, it is not unreasonable to have a few, simple, reasonable rules. [A strong minority points out that we once laughed at the Soviet Union and other totalitarian states for such absurdities as prohibiting photography and requiring citizens to carry identification cards. Nevertheless, railroad stations are in some fashion private property and it is entirely within Amtrak's purview to have some sort of rules. - Editor]  Of course, Amtrak struggles to get the word out about the degree of leniency to all the station and other personnel nationwide and concedes that “over-zealous” employees have needlessly chastised rail fans for taking photos.  Moreover, the rules only apply to Amtrak property—different rules apply for photos taken on property of other railroads, and so forth. We advocates and our “railfan” friends have a responsibility to assist Amtrak in educating others about their reasonable photography policy.

The Fleet. A significant aspect of the fleet policy for readers of TWA is that Amtrak is using stimulus funds to repair cars and locomotives at Beech Grove.  After the meeting Saturday, we were all invited down to Union Station to see a rebuilt train consisting of two sleepers, a diner, and a locomotive—all of which had been wreck damaged.  The equipment looked great:  The diner was decorated in pleasing shades of navy blue and brown, and looked really classy.

Routes. Regarding long distance trains, Amtrak made official their intent to restructure the Sunset and Texas Eagle routes by operating a daily Los Angeles-San Antonio-Chicago train with a connecting San Antonio-New Orleans train.  The LA-Chicago train would have full dining and lounge services.  Amtrak has divided their 15 long-distance trains into three groups of five.  The five worst performers — including the Sunset and Eagle—will be addressed this year, the middle five in 2011, and the five best—such as the Empire Builder and Southwest Chief — will be tweaked beginning in 2012.  The undesirability of tri-weekly service on any route was noted.

Perhaps more significantly, Amtrak seems to be grasping—and willing to emphasize publicly — the importance of their long distance trains.  One of the slides in a presentation devoted to long distance trains was titled “Long Distance Trains are Fundamental to Amtrak’s Mission and Future”.  The slide included pie charts that showed that, while long distance trains provided 15 percent of Amtrak’s riders, they accounted for 24 percent of Amtrak’s revenue.  Long distance trains account for 39 percent of Amtrak’s train miles but 46 percent of passenger miles.  Moreover, long distance ridership and on-time performance has been steadily improving.

Regarding on-time performance, Amtrak is changing the metric to include arrivals at intermediate stops, instead of just end points.  Officials commented at the meeting that this change took the passengers’ point of view into consideration as well as the Operating Department’s point of view.  The Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 (PRIIA) provides that, beginning in 2013, there will be an on-time performance tolerance of 15 minutes for intermediate stops.

Overall Impression. As encouraging as these developments are, the most significant aspects of the “Dialog for Progress” were that it was conducted in the first place, and that Amtrak recognized the need to reach out directly to the railfan and advocacy communities—the event was open to anyone who saw the notice in Trains and was one of the first 300 to register—rather than simply report the findings to any particular group.

Tom Carper, Joe Boardman, and the other officials were present throughout the session and at the subsequent equipment display and responded patiently and concisely to all the questions. This was at times no small feat, with an audience so amazed at finally having a chance to speak and hear candid responses that emotions sometimes ran high.  Amtrak intends to conduct more of these events and I encourage TWA readers to plan on attending.

The Long Distance studies: Amtrak buy the numbers

by Daniel Carleton (late January 2010)

Amtrak, in the past months, has proffered three studies regarding the re-establishment of service on three lines: The Sunset Limited east of New Orleans, the Pioneer and the North Coast Hiawatha. The Hiawatha was discontinued in October of 1979 as the country reeled from the consequences of the world’s third oil shock. The Pioneer was discontinued in May 1997 as Amtrak banked its future and fortune on a then-yet-to-be-named high speed train in the Northeast. The Sunset was indefinitely suspended east of New Orleans due to track damage sustained in August 2005 and repaired by January of the following year.

Section 224 and 226 of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 (PRIIA) required Amtrak to develop plans for restoring service to these routes. Much has been written and shall continue to be written as to the validity of these studies; the rhetoric is long and facts are questionable. As regards equipment, however, this boilerplate paragraph appears in both studies for the Pioneer and Hiawatha:

“Restoration of daily service on the three long-distance routes Amtrak has been directed to study by PRIIA – the North Coast Hiawatha; the Chicago-Seattle Pioneer; and the Sunset Limited between New Orleans, Louisiana and Sanford/Orlando, Florida – would require approximately 100 additional Superliner cars. That equipment does not exist today. Amtrak has 20 repairable “wreck status” Superliner cars, which it plans to restore to service in order to alleviate equipment shortages on existing Western long distance trains. In addition, if Amtrak is to continue to provide existing services on long distance routes, it must in the very near future replace nearly 100 remaining “Heritage” cars that are now more than half a century old.”

When summing up the hypothesized dollar figures for equipping the expanded services the amount runs between $477-534 million, depending on what options are acted upon. Amtrak appears to be settled on the inflated figure of $4.5 million per Superliner, bringing a 100 car order to $450 million. The balance would purportedly be expended on motive power.

To the uninitiated it would be reasonable to assume that a public carrier would enjoy certain benefits unavailable to a private company. The rolling stock of a common carrier railroad is private property and as such subject to applicable property taxes. Private companies take great pains to justify what assets are kept as well as the spare parts on hand to keep them in a state of operation. Such justification must take into account the ebbs and flows of business. Therefore, during the ‘golden age’ of passenger rail transportation there could be found in or near major rail hubs rows of passenger cars awaiting the call to duty during times of heavy traffic demand. In 1946 the Pullman Company alone operated 5500 cars; by 1956, this was down to just over 2600.

Amtrak is a public corporation and not subject to property taxes. And since Amtrak could be viewed as a work-fare program it is not a stretch to imagine public monies spent for fleets of passenger cars awaiting the call to duty during heavy traffic loads. In 1972, the roster held 1262 cars. If Amtrak’s advertising is to be believed, this was about one-third of the total cars inherited from the private railroads. Currently Amtrak rosters 1367 active passenger cars; exclusive of Acela and Talgo trainsets. Where is all the extra capacity when needed? Where is the work-fare program to sustain the domestic railcar manufacturers? Instead of the rows of passenger cars on standby there is a one-size-fits-all passenger train running 365 days a year. Instead of a robust domestic railcar industry there is silence with the last, the Budd Company, closing its doors in 1987.

Currently, Amtrak stables about 250 active diesel-electric road locomotives, exclusive of the dual-mode locomotives in the Northeast. At the height of the F40 era at Amtrak there were 216 on the roster (plus 25 GE P30CH‘s); please bear in mind there was as yet no electrification east of New Haven, Connecticut. Today, the F40 is extinct on Amtrak. With the exception of Ontario’s GO Transit, Amtrak is the only original owner of the F40 locomotive to completely phase them out. On the private railroads, locomotives could be rebuilt under a Capital Rebuild Program allowing the unit to be depreciated over the anticipated additional life of the unit. As Amtrak is a public entity and not subject to property taxes no value was seen in the F40 fleet, and they were sold to commuter railroads, freight service or for scrap.

The national malaise toward serviceable passenger rolling stock has not gone unnoticed by those states desiring service. California, Washington and North Carolina have acquired cars (and in some cases locomotives) to properly address the needs of their constituents. Soon Wisconsin will join this once exclusive club as they reequip their Milwaukee to Chicago service with new trainsets from Talgo.

The national malaise toward service expansion has not gone unnoticed by the federal government as may be witnessed by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grants (ARRA) for High-Speed Rail. In an effort to revitalize America’s passenger rail network the feds have bypassed Amtrak and instead are seeding monies directly to the states. None of these projects tapped for funds will actually attain true high speed (greater than 150 mph) but will improve or expand existing rail services.

Even to the most casual observer the role of Amtrak is being minimized. Attempting to reverse this trend Amtrak’s president recently gave a speech declaring their relevance, “Being a healthier Amtrak helps position itself as THE provider and partner of choice for commuter, intercity passenger rail and high-speed rail service. We currently have partnerships with 15 states accounting for nearly 50 percent of our average weekday departures and we plan to foster more.”

However, when there is a legitimate need for a service to be rendered a way shall always be found. Lately it appears that ‘way’ does not include Amtrak. Is it the fault of the track worker who was given defective concrete ties to install? Is it the fault of the Viewliner car attendant whose car is shaking apart around her? Is it the fault of Pullman-Standard or Budd whose doors closed for good for a lack of orders? Is it the fault of management whose priorities change just a often as the politicos they answer to? Ultimately, it must be recognized that Amtrak does not deliver any of the possible benefits of a public corporation and all of the disadvantages of a welfare program.

First off, the news items:

• The State of Oregon reports it has purchased two new TALGO trainsets for service between Eugene and Vancouver, British Columbia.
• Jolene Molitoris, currently Director of Ohio Department of Transportation, and former Federal Railroad Administration chief, this Wednesday “gave a passionate speech about ODOT” and the nascent 3-C (Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati) corridor.  According to “Linking Ohio,”  Ms. Molitoris emphasized “that no corridor has ever gone from zero passenger rail options to high-speed rail in one step.  She described projects like in Maine and North Carolina that all started with standard speed rail before upgrading to higher-speed.”  Linking Ohio, which is a project of the 501(c)3 non-profit All Aboard Ohio, noted that improving current speeds — 39 mph average, 79 mph top speed — needs to be the first phase “of a larger passenger rail strategy.”
• And then from North Carolina comes the news, according “The not-so-fast track for high speed rail” (Stateline.org, 25 February 2010), that a “$520 million chunk [of the Federal high speed funds]… will go toward 30 specific improvements between Raleigh and Charlotte, and another $25 million will be used to reduce [rail] congestion between Raleigh and Richmond, Virginia… Eugene Conti, North Carolina’s secretary of transportation, says work on the upgrades will start within a few months. The projects include adding more double-tracking that would allow freight and passenger trains to pass each other and separating rails from roads. The changes are designed to cut down on delays for both trains and auto traffic.”
• On the flip side, Buena Park, California may have to demolish a brand-new passenger station if the planned high-speed trains whiz past there without stopping (AP story, 8 March), and Florida’s newly-awarded high-speed train is not planned to connect with SunRail commuter trains (cable-only local news “channel 13″ story, 5 March; and commentary on The Infrastructurist). Doesn’t anyone talk to anyone else anymore?
• Saturday’s Amtrak Town Hall, sponsored by TRAINS magazine (Kalmbach Publishing Co.) was the first of its kind. Presentations, plans, and candid discussions indicate Amtrak has some good people who are making real progress. More on this shortly, but one remark overheard afterward was, “For the first time I heard discussion of ‘per revenue passenger mile’ rather than just ‘per passenger.’”
• And a personal note: “Gentle Readers” is how Isaac Asimov — a modern-day Renaissance man, author of nearly 500 books, and my chief inspiration to learn about science, arts, literature, history and everything — addressed his audience, and I will occasionally use his phrase in remembrance.

Next, some feedback –

On the PIRG report, C.B. Hall writes:

I saw the document as an expression of advocacy, not an analysis of high-speed rail’s actual prospects. Chief among the obstacles – and an obstacle I don’t recall US PIRG even mentioning – is the likelihood of political winds shifting in Washington, DC. We now have a national administration that is exceptionally well disposed towards passenger rail, but that administration has less than three years to go. We’re not going to get HSR, or even a major part of it, done by the next presidential election. What we can get done is a foretaste of HSR can ultimately do.

The investment should go to a very limited number of corridors where visible results can be achieved on the shortest timeline. Three years from now, we may have a national administration that returns non-NEC HSR funding to the $25 million or whatever it was all through the 1990s. That likelihood will decrease, however, if in the meantime HSR in a few model corridors is far enough advanced to act as good advertising to the rest of the country. Otherwise, the risk of stagnation and skepticism only grows.

Yes, Mr. Hall, the report addressed “here’s what we need and how we can get there” more than it asked, “what stands in our way.” Being guardedly optimistic, it exemplifies elimination of once-widespread socialist dogma which stunted rail passenger advocacy for decades. Look, if you want to start an argument, propose a project that will “reduce Global Warming.” If you want to get something done, propose a project that will “reduce Pollution.” Same project, but which one will get built? Eliminate the rhetoric from passenger train advocacy and let’s get people moving.

To Mr. Hall’s other point, a perfect example of a results-oriented approach is the San Diego Trolley, which built its first, highly successful, line at low cost, and proved its value to the community.  North Carolina is doing the right thing already: read on.

Regarding continued expansion of passenger rail, reader Stan Probstein asks:

[W]hy does Amtrak continue to be the best kept secret for rail travel? Why isn’t Amtrak advertising on cable networks like Fox News channel, MSNBC and CNN as well as on the broadcast networks? How can rail travel make a comeback if new rail ridership isn’t informed?

True, the only market-specific advertising ever run in Phoenix by sputtering old Maxwell-style Amtrak was in 1996 to announce the closure of Union Station and the re-routing of the Sunset Limited. However, if updated thinking as was heard at this week’s Chicago’s Town Hall meeting is any indication, — Stay tuned.

Now, let’s look at a hypothetical 81-mile passenger train route.  By the way, that happens to be the distance from Tampa to Orlando.

Key to investing our dollars wisely, is understanding the difference between Average speed and Top speed. Trains do not accelerate like sports cars; subway trains with their powerful electric motors accelerate at about 2.5 miles per hour per second, or in the parlance of race cars, “zero to 60 in half a minute or so.” A conventional diesel-electric passenger train takes perhaps two minutes from a standing stop to 60 mph.  Similar figures apply to slowing down. Thus, it is far more important to eliminate slow sections of track than it is to have short stretches of theoretical high speeds.

Amtrak today operates the 81-mile Orlando-Tampa route with six intermediate stops in almost exactly 2 hours – about 40 mph average speed. Eliminating most of the stops would save perhaps fifteen minutes, but at a severe impact to ridership and to the detriment of Kissimmee, Waldo, Ocala, Wildwood, Dade City, and Lakeland.

I have here a spreadsheet with rough estimations of times for a route with one station stop and a 1/4 mile section of 10mph (like a bridge or slow curve).  Plugging in some sample numbers, let’s look at what happens as we increase top speed.

top speed, 59 mph:  1 hour, 27 minutes
top speed 79 mph with curve upgrade to 30mph:  1:08 (saves 19 minutes)
90 mph, 1:02 (saves an additional 6 minutes)
110 mph, 53 minutes (saves an additional 9 minutes)
168 mph, 44 minutes (saves an additional 10 minutes)

The biggest time savings comes from increasing the top speed to 79mph versus 59mph.  Beyond 90mph, we save only twenty more minutes by nearly doubling that speed. Going three times as fast (180mph vs. 60) doesn’t get you there three times as fast, either: only about twice as fast, because of acceleration and deceleration.

And the cost of a 168mph railroad is far beyond a 90mph railroad. Beyond 110, trains cannot share tracks with heavy freight trains, nor can there be grade crossings, so an entirely new guideway is needed.

Removing bottlenecks is the single best thing: upgrading that one curve to 30mph saves about 1 minute; to 59mph, about 2 min. Compare two minutes savings for the cost of a single curve or bridge against 20 minutes saved upgrading 80 miles of track, and you’re looking at a pretty favorable cost-benefit ratio.

The practical impact is that incremental investments up to 79mph have direct, positive impact on freight and passenger trains alike; much above 90mph starts to diminish the utility of corridors for freight; and above 110mph removes passenger trains from most existing corridors, at stratospheric costs for new rights-of-way and without the benefit to industry and jobs that accrue from better  freight service.

Looking again at North Carolina, Secretary Conti says that the high-speed funds there will result in noticeable “improvements in stations, on the track and with equipment in the next couple years… Our focus is to show progress in the immediate sense…” (stateline.org)

Amtrak of late seems to be involved with sensible projects that will get built, like North Carolina’s upgrades, while also talking refreshingly favorably about intercity routes at the Chicago Town Hall. Will America’s modern passenger trains finally catch their stride at Amtrak’s 39th birthday? Stay tuned, Gentle Readers.

\\/

William Lindley,
Scottsdale, Ariz.

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect
before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.
-   John Quincy Adams

Gentle Readers,

Darwin was wrong. No, I’m not questioning “did man descend from the apes?” (perhaps he should have said “ascend” anyway). Darwin postulated a continual pace of evolution, but the reality is: whether we discuss clothing fashions, musical taste, or changes in animal species, change is almost invariably glacially slow for long periods, punctuated by flashes of utter revolution.

We seem at last to have entered such a quick phase of passenger rail renaissance.

In these past few decades, passenger trains have been accumulating a constituency  in both size and composition. Like a blizzard in New York City or Philadelphia, it grew slowly at first and now more quickly.

Robert R. Young, variously known as the “gadfly of the rails” and the “populist of Wall Street,” as early as the 1940s, foresaw the impending crisis in passenger trains and indeed railroading generally. Even before jet aircraft and superhighways, Young saw slow trains and antiquated equipment as obstacles to future passenger train profits, and the stagnation of American design and manufacturing as impediments to progress. Young sought to improve his Chesapeake & Ohio passenger trains “to head off a slump that might mean a demand for nationalization…” — a threat realized in the creation of Amtrak in 1971 — and “When Young decided to buy two new streamliners for the C&O and two for the Chicago-Grand Rapids-Petroskey run of the Pere Marquette, he was struck with the limited capacity of the de luxe car-building industry. Young’s subsequent decision to replace every bit of passenger equipment on the C&O involved waiting for months for delivery…” (both quotes, Life Magazine, 24 February 1947.)

The creation of Amtrak, proceeding from a goal set in the late 1960s by Anthony Haswell’s National Association of Railroad Passengers, was a legislative place-holder designed to effect the return of a healthy national rail passenger system. Despite the most concerted efforts of many during the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo and since, the legal and political roadblocks erected over the preceding century have proven difficult to overcome. But as the romance of fast planes and fast cars was replaced by the frustrations and dehumanizations of X-rays, pat-down searches and plugged expressways, the latent demand for trains returned.

Even in the warmth and vast spaces of the American West, the San Diego Trolley and Los Angeles Metrolink were pioneers of streetcar and regional rail, overturning forever the idea that superhighways and jet aircraft had obsoleted trains.

As cities across the country opened new rail systems, and as Amtrak has worked with states to extend services, the snow-drifts continued. Some of these, like the Gulf Breeze, were scattered in the wind; while others grew, in places like North Carolina and Virginia.

Pressure for change also grew in equipment and the railroads themselves. In the 1990s, Bombardier’s BiLevel coach and General Motors’ F59PH led the way in modern passenger equipment even as most light-rail orders went to Europe or Japan. The failed Penn Central, which had become government-owned Conrail, was sold and became parts of the profitable CSX and Norfolk Southern railways.

The Obama administration’s eight billion dollar outlay on higher-speed rail, announced in April of 2009, perhaps played a part in Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway purchasing BNSF. Fast upon the heels of the awards of this Federal money we find billionaire Carl Icahn’s American Railcar Industries having formed a joint venture with US Railcar. US Railcar has built regional trains for Florida, and  hopes to capture the upcoming market for high-speed equipment.  Obama’s eight billion dollars, on a national scale, is tiny; but it has become a critical piece.

Though you may not be able to ride Denver’s Ski Train to the slopes this year, residents of New York City and Philadelphia who have been keeping the tips of their show-shovels shiny can tell you that, when snow has been falling on the mountain for long enough, sometimes it only takes one flake to start an avalanche.

Yesterday’s Friends of Transit conference which I attended in Phoenix highlighted that, when enough people — and the right people — assemble behind an idea, there are no more obstacles: just work to be done.  The same avalanche as happened with streetcars in Phoenix leading now to serious plans for regional rail, is happening nationally. Of note: Richard Simonetta, who spearheaded the genius of Phoenix’s METRO success — where, through community involvement, seven billion dollars of new development accompanied rather than followed the construction of the line — is now National Director of High Speed Rail at URS, a joint venture of whom is planning the California High Speed Rail Authority’s 800-mile system. (URS press releases on Simonetta and California HSR)

California’s HSR so far looks to be at least somewhat sensibly designed to build on, rather than compete with, a passenger rail matrix which includes Amtrak California’s Surfliners, San Joaquins and Capitols. This contrasts with some other high speed systems recently proposed (and next time we will look at what happens to travel time versus return on investment, on a hypothetical 81-mile corridor). California is carrying on Robert Young’s desire for modern railways.

Desire for continuing passenger profits like Young felt at C&O carried over to the street railways, whose President’s Conference designed the PCC streetcar in the late 1930s with modern innovations: smooth, powerful acceleration and comfortable suspension. PCC cars continued to be built in America through the 1950s; in Europe, licensed designs were improved upon and constructed until fairly recently. Competitor products for the PCC were offered by the J.G. Brill Company, which became ACF-Brill; in 1994, some of that same American Car & Foundry’s designs, properties and personnel were acquired by the same American Railcar Industries that Mr. Icahn owns today.

As streetcar manufacturing moves back to the United States, with American plants of Japanese and European companies recently joined by Oregon Iron Works products; and as production likewise steps up on full-size passenger trains, remember that a “stimulus” is hardly a new idea. In 1947, the United States was in recession; and 63 years ago this week:

“Young’s idea is that if the American railroads would replace their Pullman and coach equipment every seven years, the resulting mass manufacturing orders would make the U.S. economy recession-proof…” (also from Life Magazine’s 24 February 1947 profile of Robert R. Young.)

Now, Canada’s VIA Rail has been using 50-year old streamliners from the Budd Company, which were built well enough to have lasted decades. VIA plans to use them for decades more. An inspection of passenger trains as recently as five years before “Amtrak Day” (May Day, 1971) shows U.S. railroads on their secondary trains continued to successfully use  heavyweight equipment built in 1920s and 1930s before the advent of lightweight construction.  Such well-built cars too lasted 40 or 50 years, being outmoded only by style, not function.  So perhaps “augment” rather than “replace” every seven years would be prudent and effective, as passenger trains increasingly recover the market share vacated fifty years ago, and cater to new needs.

Amtrak can seize on the positive publicity from its successful train to Lynchburg, Virginia which has so far not required its planned state operating subsidy. This is a chance to appeal to both conservatives and progressives… yet the same Amtrak this week is threatening “to scuttle the SunRail commuter train planned for Central Florida before it picks up its first passenger.”  (Orlando Sentinel, 23 February 2010) The issue is liability insurance — and surely a consistent policy on this subject is crucial — and one hopes a constructive discussion can take place.

States like Virginia don’t really care how much “profit,” if any, Amtrak makes; only that state monies reserved for operating subsidies should be as small, and last as long, as possible. Any state function fulfilling its role while turning even a little of its money back to the treasury is bound to get someone excited at the State House. Several other Amtrak trains could follow the Virginia model of additional service for small increases in subsidy. Extending the Heartland Flyer south to Houston, or north to connect with service to Kansas City or even St. Louis, springs to mind.

If Amtrak, in partnership with host railroads, can thusly open the spigot for future capital outlays like upgraded tracks, signals, and stations, then the advancing avalanche which is the passenger rail renaissance will be unstoppable.

Gentle Readers,

Thank you for returning this week for another installment of This Week at Amtrak. I would like to give special appreciation to Mr. J. Bruce Richardson for the first seven years of this column.

1. Reviewing this Monday, let us begin with a line from Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass” –
   

   Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said “one ca’n't believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast…”

   Well, well. Two impossible things happened yesterday.

   On the world stage, Professor Phil Jones, at the “centre of the Climategate scandal” admitted there has been no global warming since 1995. According to the Daily Mail, he “also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now… And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ’statistically significant’ warming.” This is, naturally enough, entirely attributable to a mere blip in the data, all of which he has apparently conveniently mislaid.

   See: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html

2. And then, back home in these United States, just when you thought it was safe to go back in the waters of conventional wisdom, Ray Reed of the Lynchburg News and Advance reported Monday evening on the new second frequency on an Amtrak route in Virginia: “Lynchburg’s honeymoon with Amtrak continued in November, producing enough riders on the new train that started in October to generate a profit in its second month of operation. Virginia had planned to provide a $242,000 monthly subsidy to keep the train running. It won’t need any of that money for November…”

   http://www2.newsadvance.com/lna/news/local/article/lynchburg_amtrak_line_posted_profit_in_second_month/24136/

   Can it really be true that, despite relying on derivatives of accounting methods originally and deliberately skewed by the freight railroad companies over fifty years ago to show passenger train losses no matter what, that Amtrak really is admitting a conventional train can be at least partly profitable? Stay tuned.

3. We have discussed before the plight of our nation’s grand downtown train terminals like those in St. Louis and Kansas City which have been perhaps permanently shorn of their proper passenger functions. Cincinnati Union Terminal seemed near to receiving a similar sentence, but thankfully the kind citizens of the Queen City have raised an outcry that the “3-C” trains should again serve this Art Deco landmark as their gateway. We lend them our support toward a strong regional rail network.
4. Meanwhile, I recently have been corresponding with Richard Harnish of the Midwest High Speed Rail Association; and in reference to my comment about recent plans I felt were far too large for some high speed rail projects, he wrote:
   

   You don’t get what you want by not asking for it.

   Well, that is certainly true. And that’s what Amtrak should have done starting with the Oil Embargo of 1973 — ask Congress, “Give us $x more and we’ll do Y … give us $2*x more and we’ll do Y plus plus plus…” Ah well, hindsight.

   Today there do need to be *reasonable* and *prudent* requests… based on what is already working from experiences in California, Missouri, and so on. Not pie-in-the-sky multi-billion dollar wish lists for fast trains that will never get built, nor serve a useful purpose without a base network of local trains and transit. The ground-breaking Shinkansen and TGV, of course, were not built in a vacuum but overlaid a huge matrix of existing services.

   Nevertheless, in support both of Mr. Harnish’s position and my own, and speaking of learning from what works — the Arizona Public Interest Research Group recently asked the Arizona Rail Passenger Association to support and speak at its press conference on the US PIRG report issued 9 February –

   http://www.uspirg.org/home/reports/report-archives/transportation/transportation2/the-right-track-building-a-21st-century-high-speed-rail-system-for-america

   As a conservative and a Republican (and those two are far from always the same), I am pleasantly surprised by its generally sensible attitude toward incremental progress to eventual true high speed rail. I was also pleased that Arizona PIRG invited ARPA and the Southwest Rail Corridor Coalition advocates to answer press questions on their behalf.

   Here in Phoenix, the Metro system was approved and built after several failed transit ballot measures over a dozen years. The difference was that the successful 2000 measure had the support of both the Sierra Club and the Realtors… something which almost never happens. When a group like PIRG now comes to advocates of diverse political backgrounds to support a common goal, things might start happening.

   Now, Gentle Readers, I invite you to read the PIRG report and ask yourself — does there exist a common ground on which rail advocates from both sides of the aisle can make sensible progress toward better passenger trains? If you wish, you may reply to me directly ( wlindley@unitedrail.org ).

I look forward to hearing from you until our next Week at Amtrak.

\\/
William Lindley
Scottsdale, Ariz.

1. This is my final issue of This Week at Amtrak as principal writer, editor, and publisher. Starting with the next issue, William Lindley of Scottsdale, Arizona will take over those chores. I will be contributing occasional articles on various subjects. Mr. Lindley is a longtime United Rail Passenger Alliance professional member, and a former President of the Arizona Rail Passenger Association. He is a man with a high sense of ethics and purpose. It has been a true delight to produce over one million words about Amtrak and passenger rail in North America writing TWA the past seven years. Throughout these years, many of you have been kind enough to send messages and replies about the various columns, many complimentary, many in angst. Each and every message, no matter the content, meant someone was reading TWA, and was passionate enough about what they read to produce a response. Thank you to everyone who took time to read TWA, and especially to those who took time to reply.Most of you are familiar with Mr. Lindley’s writings in this space; he will be a clear, and much more concise voice on the issues of passenger rail – including and beyond Amtrak – as our country moves back into an era when passenger rail is not only fashionable, but realistic.

   Mr. Lindley’s views of written communiques differ from mine; he believes in shorter messages with a lot of punch. No one has ever accused me of having an economy with words; “verbose” is a term often coming to mind regarding my writings.

   I have assumed some new responsibilities with exciting projects which will bring me in conflict with continuing TWA from my keyboard. You will be hearing more about those projects at a later date.

   Amtrak last week delivered a 99 page report on the present and future status of its fleet. This space has long agitated for a plan, and one has been put on the table. The hope is this plan is just a faint beginning, and a recognition of passenger rail’s place in the future of surface transportation in this country.

   For much of the past decade for various reasons, the Amtrak Board of Directors has not been fully populated. As of today, there is only one vacant board seat, and hopefully that will soon be filled. The Amtrak board has seen many stars in the past such as David Laney, the late Paul Weyrich, and current Governor of Mississippi Haley Barbour. Here’s hoping the new board will be as serious about a vital Amtrak as those board members were, and the new board will attempt to accomplish what was accomplished by those stars.

   My e-mail and mailing addresses will all remain the same. All subscription matters will be moved over to Mr. Lindley soon. Please, don’t stop those cards and letters coming just because I will no longer be writing on a regular basis. Each new one with your thoughts will be welcome.

   Thanks for reading This Week at Amtrak, and thanks for caring about the future of passenger trains in North America.

   Mr. Lindley, it’s your turn, now.